Feds stop migrant smuggling boat off the Florida Keys again. It’s the third time in a week

Federal agents stopped another boat last week that was smuggling migrants into South Florida, according to court documents.

That brings the number of illegal human maritime smuggling operations attempted in the corridor between Key Largo and Key Biscayne to three in one week.

On Friday, Miami-Dade County police marine patrol officers stopped a 60-foot yacht off Key Biscayne that had 31 people from Haiti stowed below the deck, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which also participated in the interception of the boat.

The FWC said the boat was crewed by two smugglers. Though, per court records, no one has been arrested or charged yet in that case.

Officials still have not confirmed whether the boat traveled to South Florida from Haiti, or if the migrants made their way to somewhere else, like the Bahamas, where the smugglers picked them up.

Four days earlier, a boat that traveled from the Bahamas was stopped by U.S. Customs agents about three miles offshore of a Key Largo neighborhood carrying 14 people from Ecuador, according to a federal complaint.

Agents arrested two men crewing that boat who, per the complaint, are Cuban nationals on parolee status in the United States.

A complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. Southern District Court reveals that another smuggling voyage was intercepted by Customs agents on Friday off Key Largo. This one, a 34-foot boat carrying 18 people from various nations.

Two of the migrants have been arrested because authorities said they have been previously deported from the United States. Those men — Jesus Reyes and Francisco Rodrigo Lojano Benegas — are citizens of the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, respectively, the complaint states.

Agents say the operator of the boat, Jose Valdes Amador, is a Cuban citizen with lawful permanent residence in the U.S. He now faces charges of encouraging and inducing people to illegally enter the country, according to the complaint. His attorney declined to comment.

According to the complaint, Amador left Miami earlier in the day and picked them up in Gun Cay in the Bahamas.

A Customs and Border Protection spokesman said most of the other people on board the boat were from Ecuador “followed by those of the Dominican Republic.”

“The dangers of the trip are summarized in three possible outcomes: the victimization of undocumented immigrants by smuggling organizations, the inconvenience of a criminal prosecution and the loss of life at sea,” the spokesman said in a statement emailed to the Herald.